Welcome to the board. My best recommendation, having had four lumber surgeries and being fused from L3 to S1, is to get several opinions, from both a neurosurgeon and an orthopedic spine surgeon, before agreeing to any surgery.

You don’t provide much information, but what you do report as your symptoms don’t jive with the recommended surgery. If you have pain in the front of the thighs, it is most likely coming from the L2 and L3 spinal nerves or stenosis in the central canal at these levels. The compression of spinal nerves below L3 causes pain in the back of the legs, buttocks and what people think is “hips.” Look for a “dermatome map” online to see which spinal nerves innervate which areas of the body. It gives you an idea of where to begin looking for a problem but is by no means exact.

It would be extremely unusual for a spine surgeon to perform discectomies on that many consecutive levels. It would create instability if a fusion were not performed at the same time. Also if there are that many bulging or herniated discs, I would assume there are other issues as well...things that would not be addressed by a discectomy alone.

In the lumbar spine, the segment that carries the most movement is at L4-5. By the time you get down to S1 there is almost no movement. Being fused at S1 isn’t noticeable to most who have it done. Sometimes it can create issues with the Sacroiliac (SI) joints though.